She says that \u201cchildren of primary school age are considered to be \u201cinnocent,\u201d \u201cpre-sexual,\u201d \u201cpure\u201d beings and questions of educating about gender and sexuality often spark concerns about the potential to \u201ccorrupt childhood innocence\u201d or \u201cprematurely sexualize\u201d children\u201d \u2013 but that \u201cmany have pointed out that this concerted investment in \u201cchildhood innocence\u201d is laden with contradictions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The academic is leading a \u201cChildren\u2019s LGBTQ+ Equality and Rights\u201d survey which is targeted at children and young people under 18 and is commissioned and funded to the tune of \u20ac80,000 by the Ombudsman for Children\u2019s Office. Dr Neary is the Project Principal Investigator and the project is supported by Belong To LGBTQ+ Youth Ireland.<\/p>\n
A notice regarding the survey was sent to parents in a primary school by email from the school, Gript was informed, targeting parents of children aged 13 and under who \u2018identify as LGBTQ+\u2019.<\/p>\n
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But parents have expressed concern at what they say is a lack of scrutiny around the views expressed by Dr Neary in regard to childhood innocence, with one parent telling Gript that she believed such assertions needed to be challenged, and questioned the suitability of anyone holding such beliefs being involved in surveying schools.<\/p>\n
Dr Neary has published research where she notes<\/a>: \u201ca truly queer approach to childhood studies\u201d would also \u201cinvolve a queering of childhood innocence itself\u201d \u2013 claiming that \u201cthe age-appropriate timelines\u201d articulated by some parents and teachers point \u201cto the continuing underlying problematic assumption that children are somehow free of sexual knowledge until introduced to sexual knowledge by adults\u201d.<\/p>\n She is currently a lecturer in the School of Education in UCC \u2013 having spent ten years in the University of Limerick, where she was a Senior Lecturer in Sociology.<\/p>\n She was previously co-opted by the national curriculum body, NCCA, to be a member of their Post-Primary Development Group for Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) Post-Primary Development Group.<\/p>\n NCCA, which is currently embroiled in controversy over its draft new curriculum for Leaving Cert Maths, was also previously sharply criticised by parents who felt that it was ignoring the concerns expressed by thousands of parents<\/a> in regard to what was being developed for the SPHE curriculum in schools.<\/p>\n Explicit SPHE content and the inclusion of transgender ideology as fact in classroom lessons has continued to cause controversy since that consultation.<\/p>\n \u201cFEARS AROUND \u2018CHILDHOOD INNOCENCE\u2019 ACT AS A BARRIER\u201d<\/p>\n Dr Neary appeared before a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education in 2018 where she argued<\/a>\u00a0that changes to RSE must \u201cFirstly .. take account of how fears around \u2018childhood innocence\u2019 act as a barrier in ways that don\u2019t account for the capabilities of children or the wants of parents.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be effective, comprehensive RSE must begin in early years \u2014 from as young as three \u2014 in partnership with parents,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Neary said that \u201cthe recent developments in RSE in Wales and the recommendations made by the expert panel outlined in Renold and McGeeney\u2019s (2017)\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0should serve as an exemplary signpost for changes to RSE in Ireland\u201d \u2013 and added that \u201cmany of their recommendations are echoed across my written submission\u201d.<\/p>\n In the\u00a0report linked<\/a>\u00a0by Neary in her opening statement in Leinster House, Renold and McGeeney, in arguing for changes to the Welsh RSE curriculum, insisted that children 0-5 express sexuality and that this is natural and healthy.<\/p>\n They say children\u2019s \u201clearning and experience of sexuality and relationships\u201d begins \u201cas soon as they enter the social world\u201d \u2013 adding \u201cfrequently children and young people are viewed as \u2018innocent\u2019 or \u2018pre-sexual\u2019 beings, sparking unproven concerns within schools about the potential for SRE to \u2018corrupt childhood innocence\u2019 or \u2018prematurely sexualise\u2019 young people\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cYet expressing sexuality through sexual behaviours and relationships with others is a natural, healthy part of growing up. For example, for children aged between 0-5, behaviours such as holding or playing with own genitals, curiosity about other children\u2019s genitals, interest in body parts and what they do and curiosity about sex and gender differences reflect \u2018safe and healthy development\u2019 (see Brook 2015)\u201d, they wrote.<\/p>\n The report also insists that there should be a statutory requirement that children in Wales, aged 3-16, be taught RSE,\u00a0 and that parents should not be allowed to remove their children from the lessons.<\/p>\n Neary has published papers on topics around education including\u00a0Marriage Equality Time: Entanglements of sexual progress and childhood innocence in Irish primary schools.<\/p>\n In the latter, she\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cqueer theory has long attended to how discourses of innocence constrain and restrict childhood\u201d, quoting research that argues that the \u2018rhetoric of innocence\u2019 offers a refusal to \u2018calculate the child\u2019s future before it has the opportunity to explore desire\u2019.<\/p>\n In that paper she claims that \u201cthe persistence of notions of childhood innocence ensures that education about sexuality and gender diversity continues to be seen by school staff and parents as a much more explosive topic than bullying prevention\u201d.<\/p>\n A \u2018QUEERING OF CHILDHOOD INNOCENCE\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n And she notes<\/a>: \u201ca truly queer approach to childhood studies\u201d would also \u201cinvolve a queering of childhood innocence itself\u201d \u2013 claiming that \u201cthe age-appropriate timelines\u201d articulated by some parents and teachers point \u201cto the continuing underlying problematic assumption that children are somehow free of sexual knowledge until introduced to sexual knowledge by adults\u201d.<\/p>\n The hope of Neary and her fellow researcher, Mary Lou Rasmussen, as expressed in their paper, is that \u201cdiscussions about children, education and sexuality might be imagined otherwise\u201d. They quote Prof Kathryn Bond Stockton\u2019s work on the \u2018brutality of the ideal of the innocent child\u2019 and \u201cgrowing sideways\u201d.<\/p>\n Bond Stockton\u2019s book exploring children \u201cgrowing sideways\u201d was described as a \u201cfascinating look at children\u2019s masochism, their interactions with pedophiles and animals, their unfathomable, hazy motives (leading them at times into sex, seduction, delinquency, and murder), their interracial appetites, and their love of consumption and destruction through the alluring economy of candy\u201d,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to a review on Duke University Press.<\/p>\n Neary\u00a0references<\/a>\u00a0Bond Stockton\u2019s idea of growing sideways again in another paper entitled,\u00a0Trans children and the necessity to complicate gender in primary schools,\u00a0in which she is critical of the \u201cviolence of gender norms\u201d and discusses the need to reimagine \u201cviolently cisgendered standards of gender\u201d.<\/p>\n In another\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0(2023), Neary says that age-appropriateness is an arbitrary concept\u00a0 \u2013 and that \u201cassumptions about childhood innocence\u201d are \u201ctightly regulating children\u2019s access to knowledge about sexuality and gender\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this way, we can see how \u2018innocence\u2019 \u2018is something that adults wish upon children with the powerful concept of age-appropriateness having a distinct impact on the shape of sexuality education in primary schools,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n She says that insights from children are required to break through \u201cthe arbitrary politics of age\u201d \u2013 and that otherwise, \u201cadult assumptions and panic-driven moral judgements around concepts such as \u2018childhood-innocence\u2019 and \u2018age-appropriateness\u2019 will continue to hold back progress and fail in realising the basic human rights of all children to have their lives and families reflected and meaningfully included in sexuality education\u201d.<\/p>\n SUITABILITY QUESTIONED<\/p>\n Dr Niamh Regan, who works with the Natural Women\u2019s Council, and who has researched the introduction of gender ideology in schools, said that she found Dr Neary\u2019s views in regard to childhood innocence \u201cvery troubling\u201d, adding \u201cthese assertions needed to be challenged \u2013 and I question the suitability of anyone holding such beliefs being involved in shaping curricula or surveying schools\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThis lecturer told the Oireachtas Education Committee that effective sexual education should start at age three \u2013 and that she believed fears about childhood innocence was a barrier to teaching RSE in primary schools, yet she has been given another grant \u2013 this time of \u20ac80,000 \u2013 and is surveying primary schools,\u201d Dr Regan said.<\/p>\n \u201cParents are the primary educators of their own children, a right the Government has a constitutional duty to uphold. Yet time and again, parents have been obstructed, blocked, belittled and ignored by schools, the Department and even patrons when asserting that right,\u201d she said. \u201cIt feels like our education system has been captured.\u201d<\/p>\n Another parent, Sam Poynter, told Gript that \u201cno parent believes that childhood innocence and age appropriateness is socially constructed. \u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have an abundance of anecdotal and empirical evidence that exposing children to sexual experiences or content can cause real and long-lasting harm, especially if it is introduced too early for their psyches to process, resulting in acting out behaviours on peers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n